Love of the birds is a natural passion and one which requires neither
analysis nor defense. The birds live, we live; and life is sufficient
answer unto life. But humanity, unfortunately, has had until recently
other less justifiable interests—that of fighting pre-eminent among
them—so that out of a gory past only a few shadowy names of bird-lovers
emerge, Aristotle, Pliny the Elder, Ælian. Ornithology as a science is
modern, at best not over two centuries and a half old, while as a
popular pursuit its age is better reckoned by decades. It is, therefore,
highly gratifying to those who feel this primal instinct strongly to be
able to note the rising tide of interest in their favorite study.
Ornithology has received unwonted attention of late, not only in
scientific works but also in popular literature, and it has taken at
last a deserved place upon the curriculum of many of our colleges and
secondary schools.
We of the West are just waking, not too tardily we hope, to a
realization of our priceless heritage of friendship in the birds. Our
homesteads have been chosen and our rights to them established; now we
are looking about us to take account of our situation, to see whether
indeed the lines have fallen unto us in pleasant places, and to reckon
up the forces which make for happiness, welfare, and peace. And not the
least of our resources we find to be the birds of Washington. They are
here as economic allies, to bear their part in the distribution of plant
life, and to wage with us unceasing warfare against insect and rodent
foes, which would threaten the beneficence of that life. They are here,
some of them, to supply our larder and to furnish occupation for us in
the predatory mood. But above all, they are here to add zest to the
enjoyment of life itself; to please the eye by a display of graceful
form and piquant color; to stir the depths of human emotion with their
marvelous gift of song; to tease the imagination by their exhibitions of
flight; or to goad aspiration as they seek in their migrations the
mysterious, alluring and ever insatiable Beyond. Indeed, it is scarcely
too much to say that we may learn from the birds manners which will
correct our own; that is, stimulate us to the full realization in our
own lives of that ethical program which their tender domestic relations
so clearly foreshadow.
In the matter herein recorded account has of course been taken of nearly
all that has been done by other workers, but the literature of the birds
of Washington is very meager, being chiefly confined to annotated lists,
and the conclusions reached have necessarily been based upon our own
experience, comprising some thirteen years residence in the State in the
case of Mr. Bowles, and a little more in my own. Field work has been
about equally divided between the East-side and the West-side and we
have both been able to give practically all our time to this cause
during the nesting seasons of the past four years. Parts of several
seasons have been spent in the Cascade Mountains, but there remains much
to learn of bird-life in the high Cascades, while the conditions
existing in the Blue Mountains and in the Olympics are still largely to
be inferred. Two practically complete surveys were made of island life
along the West Coast, in the summers of 1906 and 1907; and we feel that
our nesting sea-birds at least are fairly well understood.
Altho necessarily bulky, these volumes are by no means exhaustive. No
attempt has been made to tell all that is known or may be known of a
given species. It has been our constant endeavor, however, to present
something like a true proportion of interest as between the birds, to
exhibit a species as it appears to a Washingtonian. On this account
certain prosy fellows have received extended treatment merely because
they are ours and have to be reckoned with; while others, more
interesting, perhaps, have not been considered at length simply because
we are not responsible for them as characteristic birds of Washington.
In writing, however, two classes of readers have had to be
considered,—first, the Washingtonian who needs to have his interest
aroused in the birds of his home State, and second, the serious
ornithological student in the East. For the sake of the former we have
introduced some familiar matter from other sources, including a previous
work[1] of the author’s, and for this we must ask the indulgence of
ornithologists. For the sake of the latter we have dilated upon certain
points not elsewhere covered in the case of certain Western
birds,—matters of abundance, distribution, sub-specific variety, etc.,
of dubious interest to our local patrons; and for this we must in turn
ask their indulgence.
The order of treatment observed in the following pages is substantially
the reverse of that long followed by the American Ornithologists’ Union,
and is justifiable principally on the ground that it follows a certain
order of interest and convenience. Beginning, as it does, with the
supposedly highest forms of bird-life, it brings to the fore the most
familiar birds, and avoids that rude juxtaposition of the lowest form of
one group with the highest of the one above it, which has been the
confessed weakness of the A. O. U. arrangement.
The outlines of classification may be found in the Table of Contents to
each volume, and a brief synopsis of generic, family, and ordinal
characters, in the Analytical Key prepared by Professor Jones. It has
not been thought best to give large place to these matters nor to
intrude them upon the text, because of the many excellent manuals which
already exist giving especial attention to this field.
The nomenclature is chiefly that of the A. O. U. Check-List, Second
Edition, revised to include the Fourteenth Supplement, to which
reference is made by number. Departures have in a few instances been
made, changes sanctioned by Ridgway or Coues, or justified by a
consideration of local material. It is, of course, unfortunate that the
publication of the Third Edition of the A. O. U. Check-List has been so
long delayed, insomuch that it is not even yet available. On this
account it has not been deemed worth while to provide in these volumes a
separate check-list, based on the A. O. U. order, as had been intended.
Care has been exercised in the selection of the English or vernacular
names of the birds, to offer those which on the whole seem best fitted
to survive locally. Unnecessary departures from eastern usage have been
avoided, and the changes made have been carefully considered. As matter
of fact, the English nomenclature has of late been much more stable than
the Latin. For instance, no one has any difficulty in tracing the
Western Winter Wren thru the literature of the past half century; but
the bird referred to has, within the last decade, posed successively
under the following scientific names: _Troglodytes hiemalis pacificus_,
_Anorthura h. p._, _Olbiorchilus h. p._, and _Nannus h. p._, and these
with the sanction of the A. O. U. Committee—certainly a striking example
of how _not_ to secure stability in nomenclature. With such an example
before us we may perhaps be pardoned for having in instances failed to
note the latest discovery of the name-hunter, but we have humbly tried
to follow our agile leaders.
In the preparation of plumage descriptions, the attempt to derive them
from local collections was partially abandoned because of the meagerness
of the materials offered. If the work had been purely British Columbian,
the excellent collection of the Provincial Museum at Victoria would have
been nearly sufficient; but there is crying need of a large, well-kept,
central collection of skins and mounted birds here in Washington. A
creditable showing is being made at Pullman under the energetic
leadership of Professor W. T. Shaw, and the State College will always
require a representative working collection. The University of
Washington, however, is the natural repository for West-side specimens,
and perhaps for the official collection of the State, and it is to be
devoutly hoped that its present ill-assorted and ill-housed
accumulations may early give place to a worthy and complete display of
Washington birds. Among private collections that of Mr. J. M. Edson, of
Bellingham, is the most notable, representing, as it does, the patient
occupation of extra hours for the past eighteen years. I am under
obligation to Mr. Edson for a check-list of his collection (comprising
entirely local species), as also for a list of the birds of the Museum
of the Bellingham Normal School. The small but well-selected assortment
of bird-skins belonging to Messrs. C. W. and J. H. Bowles rests in the
Ferry Museum in Tacoma. Here also Mr. Geo. C. Cantwell has left his
bird-skins, partly local and partly Alaskan, on view.
Fortunately the task of redescribing the plumage of Washington birds has
been rendered less necessary for a work of such scope as ours, thru the
appearance of the Fifth Edition of Coues Key,[2] embodying, as it does
the ripened conclusions of a uniquely gifted ornithological writer, and
above all, by the great definitive work from the hand of Professor
Ridgway,[3] now more than half completed. These final works by the
masters of our craft render the careful repetition of such effort
superfluous, and I have no hesitation in admitting that we are almost as
much indebted to them as to local collections, altho a not
inconsiderable part of the author’s original work upon plumage
description in “The Birds of Ohio” has been utilized, or re-worked,
wherever applicable.
In compiling the General Ranges, we wish to acknowledge indebtedness
both to the A. O. U. Check-List (2nd Edition) and to the summaries of
Ridgway and Coues in the works already mentioned. In the Range in
Washington, we have tried to take account of all published records, but
have been obliged in most instances to rely upon personal experience,
and to express judgments which must vary in accuracy with each
individual case.
The final work upon migrations in Washington is still to be done. Our
own task has called us hither and yonder each season to such an extent
that consecutive work in any one locality has been impossible, and there
appears not to be any one in the State who has seriously set himself to
record the movements of the birds in chronological order. Success in
this line depends upon coöperative work on the part of many widely
distributed observers, carried out thru a considerable term of years. It
is one of the aims of these volumes to stimulate such endeavor, and the
author invites correspondence to the end that such an undertaking may be
carried out systematically.
In citing authorities, we have aimed to recall the first publication of
each species as a bird of Washington, giving in italics the name
originally assigned the bird, if different from the one now used,
together with the name of the author in bold-face type. In many
instances early references are uncertain, chiefly by reason of failure
to distinguish between the two States now separated by the Columbia
River, but once comprehended under the name Oregon Territory. Such
citations are questioned or bracketed, as are all those which omit or
disregard scientific names. The abbreviated references are to standard
faunal lists appearing in the columns of “The Auk” and elsewhere, and
these are noted more carefully under the head of Bibliography, among the
Appendices.
At the outset I wish to explain the peculiar relation which exists
between myself and the junior author, Mr. J. H. Bowles. Each of us had
long had in mind the thought of preparing a work upon the birds of
Washington; but Mr. Bowles, during my residence in Ohio, was the first
to undertake the task, and had a book actually half written when I
returned to the scene with friendly overtures. Since my plans were
rather more extended than his, and since it was necessary that one of us
should devote his entire time to the work, Mr. Bowles, with unbounded
generosity, placed the result of his labors at my disposal and declared
his willingness to further the enterprise under my leadership in every
possible way. Except, therefore, in the case of signed articles from his
pen, and in most of the unsigned articles on Grouse and Ducks, where our
work has been a strict collaboration, the actual writing of the book has
fallen to my lot. In practice, therefore, I have found myself under
every degree of indebtedness to Mr. Bowles, according as my own
materials were abundant or meager, or as his information or mine was
more pertinent in a given case.
Mr. Bowles has been as good as his word in the matter of coöperation,
and has lavished his time in the quest of new species, or in the
discovery of new nests, or in the location of choice subjects for the
camera, solely that the book might profit thereby. In several
expeditions he has accompanied me. On this account, therefore, the text
in its pronouns, “I,” “we,” or “he,” bears witness to a sort of sliding
scale of intimacy, which, unless explained, might be puzzling to the
casual reader. I am especially indebted to Mr. Bowles for extended
material upon the nesting of the birds; and my only regret is that the
varying requirements of the task so often compelled me to condense his
excellent sketches into the meager sentences which appear under the head
“Nesting.” Not infrequently, however, I have thrown a few adjectives
into Mr. Bowles’s paragraphs and incorporated them without
distinguishing comment, in expectation that our joint indebtedness will
hardly excite the curiosity of any disengaged “higher critic” of
ornithology. Let me, then, express my very deep gratitude to Mr. Bowles
for his generosity and my sincere appreciation of his abilities so
imperfectly exhibited, I fear, in the following pages, where I have
necessarily usurped the opportunity.
It is matter of regret to the author that the size of these volumes, now
considerably in excess of that originally contemplated, has precluded
the possibility of an extended physical and climatic survey of
Washington. The striking dissimilarity of conditions which obtain as
between the eastern side of the State and the western are familiar to
its citizens and may be easily inferred by others from a perusal of the
following pages. Our State is excelled by none in its diversity of
climatic and physiographic features. The ornithologist, therefore, may
indulge his proclivities in half a dozen different bird-worlds without
once leaving our borders. Especially might the taxonomist, the
subspecies-hunter, revel in the minute shades of difference in plumage
which characterize the representatives of the same species as they
appear in different sections of our State. We have not gone into these
matters very carefully, because our interests are rather those of avian
psychology, and of the domestic and social relations of the birds,—in
short, the _life_ interests.
While the author’s point of view has been that of a bird-lover, some
things herein recorded may seem inconsistent with the claim of that
title. The fact is that none of us are quite consistent in our attitude
toward the bird-world. The interests of sport and the interests of
science must sometimes come into conflict with those of sentiment; and
if one confesses allegiance to all three at once he will inevitably
appear to the partisans of either in a bad light. However, a real
principle of unity is found when we come to regard the bird’s value to
society. The question then becomes, not, Is this bird worth more to _me_
in my collection or upon my plate than as a living actor in the drama of
life? but, In what capacity can this bird best serve the interests of
mankind? There can be no doubt that the answer to the latter question is
usually and increasingly, _As a living bird_. Stuffed specimens we need,
but only a representative number of them; only a limited few of us are
fitted to enjoy the pleasures of the chase, and the objects of our
passion are rapidly passing from view anyway; but never while the hearts
of men are set on peace, and the minds of men are alert to receive the
impressions of the Infinite, will there be too many birds to speak to
eye and ear, and to minister to the hidden things of the spirit. The
birds belong to the people, not to a clique or a coterie, but to all the
people as heirs and stewards of the good things of God.
It is of the esthetic value of the bird that we have tried to speak, not
alone in our descriptions but in our pictures. The author has a pleasant
conviction, born of desire perhaps, that the bird in art is destined to
figure much more largely in future years than heretofore. We have
learned something from the Japanese in this regard, but more perhaps
from the camera, whose revelations have marvelously justified the
conventional conclusions of Japanese decorative art. Nature is ever the
nursing mother of Art. While our function in the text has necessarily
been interpretative, we have preferred in the pictures to let Nature
speak for herself, and we have held ourselves and our artists to the
strictest accounting for any retouching or modification of photographs.
Except, therefore, as explicitly noted, the half-tones from photographs
are faithful presentations of life. If they inspire any with a sense of
the beauty of things as they are, or suggest to any the theme for some
composition, whether of canvas, fresco, vase, or tile, in things as they
might be, then our labor shall not have been in vain.
In this connection we have to congratulate ourselves upon the discovery,
virtually in our midst, of such a promising bird-artist as Mr. Allan
Brooks. I can testify to the fidelity of his work, as all can to the
delicacy and artistic feeling displayed even under the inevitable
handicap of half-tone reproduction. My sincerest thanks are due Mr.
Brooks for his hearty and generous coöperation in this enterprise; and
if our work shall meet with approval, I shall feel that a large measure
of credit is due to him.
The joy of work is in the doing of it, while as for credit, or “fame,”
that is a mere by-product. He who does not do his work under a sense of
privilege is a hireling, a clock-watcher, and his sufficient as coveted
meed is the pay envelope. But those of us who enjoy the work are
sufficiently rewarded already. What tho the envelope be empty! We’ve had
our fun and—well, yes, we’d do it again, especially if you thought it
worth while.
But the chief reward of this labor of love has been the sense of
fellowship engendered. The progress of the work under what seemed at
times insuperable difficulties has been, nevertheless, a continuous
revelation of good will. “Everybody helps” is the motto of the Seattle
spirit, and it is just as characteristic of the entire Pacific
Northwest. Everybody has helped and the result is a composite
achievement, a monument of patience, fidelity, and generosity far other
than my own.
I gratefully acknowledge indebtedness to Professor Robert Ridgway for
counsel and assistance in determining State records; to Dr. A. K. Fisher
for records and for comparison of specimens; to Dr. Chas. W. Richmond
for confirmation of records; to Messrs. William L. Finley, Herman T.
Bohlman, A. W. Anthony, W. H. Wright, Fred. S. Merrill, Warburton Pike,
Walter I. Burton, A. Gordon Bowles, and Walter K. Fisher, for the use of
photographs; to Messrs. J. M. Edson, D. E. Brown, A. B. Reagan, E. S.
Woodcock, and to a score of others beside for hospitality and for
assistance afield; to Samuel Rathbun, Prof. E. S. Meany, Prof. O. B.
Johnson, Prof. W. T. Shaw, Miss Adelaide Pollock, and Miss Jennie V.
Getty, for generous coöperation and courtesies of many sorts; to Francis
Kermode, Esq., for use of the Provincial Museum collections, and to
Prof. Trevor Kincaid for similar permission in case of the University of
Washington collections. My special thanks are due my friend, Prof. Lynds
Jones, the proven comrade of many an ornithological cruise, who upon
brief notice and at no little sacrifice has prepared the Analytical Key
which accompanies this work.
My wife has rendered invaluable service in preparing manuscript for
press, and has shared with me the arduous duties of proof-reading. My
father, Rev. W. E. Dawson, of Blaine, has gone over most of the
manuscript and has offered many highly esteemed suggestions.
To our patrons and subscribers, whose timely and indulgent support has
made this enterprise possible, I offer my sincerest thanks. To the
trustees of the Occidental Publishing Company I am under a lasting debt
of gratitude, in that they have planned and counselled freely, and in
that they have so heartily seconded my efforts to make this work as
beautiful as possible with the funds at command.
One’s roll of obligations cannot be reckoned complete without some
recognition also of the dumb things, the products of stranger hearts and
brains, which have faithfully served their uses in this undertaking: my
Warner-and-Swasey binoculars (8-power)—I would not undertake to write a
bird-book without them; the Graflex camera, which has taken most of the
life portraits; the King canvas boat which has made study of the
interior lake life possible;—all deserve honorable mention.
Then there is the physical side of the book itself. One cannot reckon up
the myriad hands that have wrought upon it, engravers, printers,
binders, paper-makers, messengers, even the humble goatherds in far-off
Armenia, each for a season giving of his best—out of love, I trust.
Brothers, I thank you all!
Of the many shortcomings of this work no one could be more sensible than
its author. We should all prefer to spend a life-time writing a book,
and having written it, to return and do it over again, somewhat
otherwise. But book-making is like matrimony, for better or for worse.
There is a finality about it which takes the comfort from one’s muttered
declaration, “I could do it better another time.” What I have written I
have written. I go now to spend a quiet day—with the birds.
William Leon Dawson.